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“We will always be focused on protecting our soldiers,” she said. This means continued investments in body armor, aircraft, vehicle and base protection.

Other top priorities include networking the force — connecting the dismounted soldier on the ground all the way up the chain of command — and soldiers’ situational awareness, and their lethality and accuracy, Shyu said.

The Army will also seek improvements to its platforms’ mobility. For example, getting its helicopters to fly higher and faster while consuming less fuel, Shyu said. And it will also protect investments in cybersecurity and measures to protect against electronic warfare.

“I don’t think there will be another war without cyberwarfare,” Shyu said.

A key concern from lawmakers and defense contractors is what the Army is doing to protect its industrial base.

“We really are looking at the details,” Shyu said.

Each of her program managers is responsible for identifying places where the industrial base may be particularly shallow. This means finding out, for example, when there is only one widget builder in the United States, and its closure would mean the Army has no other options.

If there are options, the Army is less concerned about that sector, Shyu said.

To spend its procurement dollars more wisely, the Army is also placing affordability caps on its development programs. It’s retiring equipment that’s unused. And it’s trying to better manage the equipment it has, so that it can buy fewer of each item down the road.

At the same time, the Army — like the other services — is waiting for guidance on sequestration as well as its final budget for this fiscal year.

Under the six-month continuing spending resolution, the government is limited to last year’s spending level for each program, meaning no new starts. And the measure prevents programs from ramping up production, even if they were on schedule to do so.

Several programs are seeing their schedules adjusted, she said, and forcing the Army to put some contracts on hold.

Congress is expected to deal with sequestration — by either delaying it or coming up with a short-term fix — in its lame-duck session after the Nov. 6 elections. But it’s not scheduled to deal with the 2013 appropriations again until March 27, when the continuing resolution expires.

So when the Army finally gets a budget, it will be six months into this fiscal year.

At this point, there’ll be so little time left in the year that it’s very likely the Army will under-obligate funds, meaning it won’t be able to spend all of the money it requested before the year ends, Shyu said.

In turn, Congress will most likely take money away next year, saying the service must not need it, since it didn’t spend it all.

“So, you’re in this vicious circle,” she explained. “You have no idea how painful it is until you’re inside and seeing all of these churns. It’s like trying to walk straight inside of a tornado.”